Jaime Morales was a wealthy Nicaraguan bankerĀ in the 1980s when Daniel Ortega stole his six-bedroom house. Ortega, who was then Nicaragua's President, called it a justified "confiscation" on behalf of the Marxist revolution that he and his Sandinista Front were leading. Morales became a leader of the U.S.-backed contra army that waged a civil war with the Sandinistas. That conflict killed 30,000 people and led to Ortega's ouster in a 1990 election--after which he paid Morales for the house.
It's a sign of either Ortega's maturation or his opportunism--or both--that when he recaptured Nicaragua's presidency in the Nov. 5 election, his...